House Hunting in Austin

We're in Austin. Yesterday we looked at eleven houses. That doesn't sound like much and at first it was just a great adventure. Met a shitzu named Ryno at one house who was curled up on the master bed trying not to be noticed. At another house we met Fang, a sweet gray cat. We discussed flow, tried to imagine where our furniture might go (Bob? Can you put your drawing table, your desk and your drum set in this room?) We gave the houses nicknames to remember them. (Circular fireplace. The Indian-Icelandic house.) By about house eight, though, I'd say to Bob, "Where would you rate this?"

And he'd say, "I dunno, fourth or fifth?"

I'd say, "What was second?"

He'd say, "Circular fireplace?"

I'd say, "Not Indian-Icelandic? Didn't Circular fireplace not have enough storage?"

He'd say, "Wasn't Circular fireplace the one with all the French stuff in it?"

I'd say, "No, wasn't that the one with the kitchen office?"

"No," he'd say, "French had the cool blackboard on the island in the kitchen."

"Are you sure?"

"I think."

"Check the pictures."





We'd peer at the pictures on our digital camera. Bob had come up with the brilliant idea that we would number the houses we were going to see and before each house he'd take a photo of a page of my notebook with the house number. That way we could figure out which house went with what pictures. But it appeared that our digital camera had been stolen and replaced with the digital camera of someone else looking at houses because the pictures seemed to be a utterly different houses than the ones we remembered.





Or didn't. Or maybe they had just been shuffled, since we did remember some things in the pictures--a dining room, say. But the bookcases in the next picture seemed in our minds to be from a different house, didn't they?

So we're out looking again today.